May 27, 2017

Intuition: If Kushner's out, good or bad?

On Facebook, Chuck Johnson from GotNews says, "Kushner looking at resigning over Russia probe". Johnson has proven to have reliable White House sources, e.g. on NeverTrumper Katie Walsh being a leaker (she got fired).

Kushner is not being investigated, let alone charged with anything or convicted. He tried to set up a diplomatic backchannel with Russia in order to deliver on Trump's campaign promise to "get along with Russia" rather than waste our political resources antagonizing them 25 years after the Cold War has died. He did not trust the standard channels for this task because they are all part of the Swamp that wants war with Russia.

The media themselves admit that he did nothing wrong and is not being charged with any crime -- it is simply part of the broader shape-shifting witch hunt against the Trump movement, especially the agenda item of "draining the Swamp".

In the comments to Johnson's Facebook post, many Trump fans are applauding in advance, saying "good riddance," etc. Similar comments are pouring in to Twitter posts that also mention a possible imminent departure by Kushner (e.g., replies to tweets by Jack Posobiec). Many on the Alt-Right have been crying for Kushner's head for months now.

So now that there may be some action taken on Kushner's status in the White House, test your intuition about whether that is a good thing or a bad thing for the Trump movement. Scroll down for the answer.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Kushner leaving the White House would be bad for the Trump movement because he is a loyalist to the besieged President, because the context of his departure would be "Trump/Russia" and would therefore further feed that narrative and pour more blood into the water for Trump's attackers, and because his replacement would be far worse (the forces that push out a Trump loyalist are unlikely to push in a more committed Trumpian).

The limited track record so far proves this. NSC Advisor Flynn was not perfect, being a lobbyist for Turkey for awhile during the campaign, though not after the election. But he was in favor of detente and cooperation with Russia, against radical Islam, and in favor of restructuring and draining the swamp within the intelligence agencies. Plus he was a loyalist to Trump all throughout the campaign and after.

Flynn was pushed out as part of the Deep State witch hunt, and his replacement McMaster was a Pentagon boarding party member who is pushing for escalation in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Korea, who deflects blame from radical Islam and Saudi Arabia, who went over Trump's head to bring in fellow loyalists of warmonger Petraeus, who publicly blocked Trump's demand that South Korea pay for the THAAD anti-missile defense, and who has been leaking to the media (including the Israeli intel on the ISIS laptop bomb plot). This comes from Mike Cernovich's provably reliable WH sources.

Attorney General Sessions recused himself from the Trump/Russia probe, rather than nipping the witch hunt in the bud. His replacement in the matter, Rosenstein, is a swamp creature who allowed the appointment of a Special Counsel, which will open up the witch hunt into endless directions forever, and ultimately try to bring down Trump's people and Trump himself on procedural technicalities rather than substantive wrongdoing which isn't there. This Special Counsel, Mueller, is a swamp creature as former head of the FBI. Whether Rosenstein is better than Obama appointee Sally Yates, and whether Mueller did a better job than Comey, is irrelevant -- both are turns for the worse, compared to who we started with in power over the Trump/Russia probe, the populist and nationalist Trump loyalist, Jeff Sessions.

Trump responded negatively to both of these scalps being claimed by the Establishment, rightly so if you "trust Trump," as they furthered the witch hunt.

If Kushner leaves, it will likely follow the same pattern. People who are paying no attention to the shifting balance of power among the interest groups may be dreaming that if Kushner's out, then Roger Stone or Pat Buchanan or Ann Coulter or Based Stick Man will take his place. Wrong: it would likely be another Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, Reince Priebus, or Mike Pence, who have never been targeted in the witch hunt, or indeed ever had any hit pieces written against them. They are pro-Establishment and pro-Swamp, so they are not only in no danger, they are guaranteed immunity by the media and Deep State.

Your intuition should be honed by this earlier post on power dynamics reflecting group-level strengths, where individuals are mere representatives of the groups in play. War is a collective affair, not every man for himself. The struggle for influence at the highest levels of political power takes the form of a war, and so there is no such thing as a free-for-all clash of individual personalities inside the White House or DC in general. It is not a soap opera or HBO serial drama.

Some of the main power groups -- the Pentagon, oil / energy industry, Wall Street, pharma, media, education sector, and so on and so forth. Individuals have influence only to the extent that they are representing one of these power groups, and drawing on the unique leverage that that group has to wield over the other groups. For example, the Pentagon's control of the armed forces, or Wall Street and the Fed's control over the macro economy, are a hell of a lot of leverage to use in order to get their way in policy outcomes.

In that post and extensively in the comments, I showed that Kushner has no influence in DC, as he represents none of the power groups and therefore has no leverage to push back against those who do. His only status derives from being the son-in-law (not even a blood relation) to the President, but Trump himself does not represent any of the power groups either -- quite the opposite. Trump's only leverage is his immense base of supporters among the citizenry who he could mobilize for or against some item of business in Washington. Kushner has no resonance with Trump's support base, so he does not even have that piece of leverage to use for influence.

But General Petraeus' PR firm (funded by a Saudi media budget) has, through McMaster, put out a bunch of anti-Kushner hit pieces, painting a false picture of a deep ideological rift between Kushner and Bannon, who are in fact closer to each other than they are apart. The goal was to target the Trump movement, and drive a wedge between them and one of the few Trump loyalists in the government, Kushner, who could then be set up by the witch hunt and forced out. So far, that Deep State operation is running according to plan, thanks to the deeply paranoid and overly emotional strain within the Right.

True, we'd rather not have Trump's senior advisor be a member of the family who's also a liberal Jew from the New York metro. But so far, people are angry at him for who he is, rather than anything that he has done. Maybe they're also jealous that he's the one sleeping with Ivanka, and not them. But if he's working for Trump, he's working for Trump. If he gets ousted over the anti-Russian witch hunt, it is unlikely that his replacement would be better than him on nationalism and "America first".

Overly emotional people need to stop fixating on an individual personality they don't like, and look one and two steps down the line to see where his departure would lead, based on the group power dynamics.

If the Trump movement refuses to do this cool-headed analysis, another scalp will be claimed by the incipient Deep State coup.

19 comments:

Very strongly agreed. But from the beginning, I've been pro-Kushner, pro-Clan (because clans further the aim of their leaders and provide deep moral support), and basically in agreement with everything that you wrote here.

Ag, why doesn't the greater empathy of conservatives help them out here? Are the propaganda efforts of the other side just outdoing our measly efforts? I arrived at the pro-Kushner stance *because* of my empathy, am a weaponized empath!, which is the strong suit of conservatives, but feel very alone in this. Well, except for you.

When it comes to the Seth Rich stuff, weaponized empathy is winning the day, though (along with weaponized autism)... Deflection, obfuscation, mocking, and other propaganda techniques just aren't working. And they're throwing everything but the kitchen sink at us, but psh...

I think the hardcore Trump fans had hopes that his daughter and son-in-law would be exactly like him, only younger. Turns out they're standard-issue liberal-moderate Democrats from New York, as was predictable. NBD if they're going to help out the patriarch, but you can see how the fans set themselves up for disappointment.

The Alt-Right let itself float way too far off into fantasy land, where Ivanka was like the Nazi Taylor Swift who had been memed into existence. Turns out she's a corporate feminist instead. That was a yuge blow to their dreams of the perfect woman. Now she's just another girl who would have rejected them in high school -- and Jared is the guy who doesn't deserve to sleep with someone that beautiful because he doesn't deadlift 500 lbs or triangulate Shia LaBeouf's flag location on /pol.

They really set themselves up for that one by fantasizing so much about Ivanka. I mean, Trump kept saying on the campaign trail that he can't say bad about Chelsea Clinton because Ivanka's her friend. They let their dicks get in the way of a loud-and-clear reality check.

It has to be something intensely personal, since they avoid blowing up against Gary Cohn and Steve Mnuchin, who are a million times worse than Kushner on the issues. All three are liberal Jews from New York, but one of them is from Trump's sector -- real estate -- while the other two are from airy-fairy finance on Wall Street, one a CEO of Goldman Sachs and the other a CIO of Goldman Sachs.

Steve Mnuchin flatly contradicted Trump's aim of a new Glass-Steagall Act to cut Wall Street investment banks down to size. He also has the gayest face and voice of anyone in the Cabinet. Plus was a film producer in Hollywood, therefore probably knows some of the figures in the Jewish pedo ring that runs the industry.

Gary Cohn just got done slamming coal as a dead-end resource, when natural gas and solar and wind have such potential.

These two are the Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Economic Advisor -- slightly more powerful than a generic advisor to the President, and both coming from an identifiable power group (Wall Street), unlike Kushner.

And yet, where was the #FireMnuchin hashtag when he shut down the Glass-Steagall goal, or #FireGlobalistGary when he slammed the livelihood of one of Trump's most loyal voters, the coal miners?

But the Alt-Right never sexually fantasized about either of them, and were never let down about who their object of desire turned out to be. And neither of them are sleeping with an object of their desire either (Mnuchin is probably working the rent boy circuit, while we know that Cohn is having an affair with Dina Habib Powell).

That ties into the paranoid / conspiratorial mindset on the Right, since they're more likely to drift off into fantasy land, and suffer extreme cognitive dissonance when reality hits them.

They're going to miss what's right under their noses -- like the CEO of Goldman Sachs from 2006 to present becoming the Chief Economic Advisor, and bashing the coal industry. There's nothing counter-intuitive, conspiratorial, or 4-dimensional about that, though, so only people looking at boring old reality are going to get worried about Globalist Gary instead of loyal Kushner.

Another sign that Kushner is fine is that the Democrat shills from Correct the Record turn out in force with their copy-and-paste hit jobs in the comments to anything that brings up his name or Ivanka's name.

Already zapped three of them.

Funny how they never flood the comments attacking Priebus, Cohn, Mnuchin, Powell, Pence, McMaster, Mattis, and all the other globalists and elitists that the Democrat party would be just fine with, as an alternative to populist-nationalist Trump supporters.

And the Swin guy, the Daily Beast writer, and his ilk and friends: they're sourced up and have been the biggest pushers of "Bad Kushner" and these guys **hate** the populist Alt-right.

Moving forward, and I think it's already happening, our movement needs to draw from all its best minds. Nassim Nicholas Taleb gets a lot of respect for his intuition because he's so strong in the maths, but most empathic people don't have that and shouldn't be dismissed. Let me be clear on what I mean by "empathic" here: the ability to read other people and discern their motives.We seem to be doing pretty well with asabiyyah lately, so I see this less a problem going forward than it was in the past.

Perhaps I'm showing my age, forgetting what it's like to be a teen or 20-something conservative and have your emotions completely run you versus merely run you hard. When it comes to the heart, nobody can be fooled like the empathic.

Slightly OT: heartened that our peeps have gotten much better with spotting the fakes...

I mean, if you can't trust "awesomepotus45" or "truthwyspr", who can you trust, Lol! (H/t Cernovich thread, @freedomlover1776)https://mobile.twitter.com/beelman_matt/status/868921850507608065/photo/1

When these guys began hitting Unz 4 or 5 days ago, realized it was all hands on deck time. I mean, how many hoaxes and whatnot have we crowdsourced over there with 0 pushback?

well, mnuchin did receive a lot of criticism. but he hasn't had nearly the amount of tasks in the administration that kushner has so it makes some sense that people would focus on him. but i agree more or less. whatever problems or concerns we have with kushner... him leaving over this russia nonsense would be a loss. at least given the circumstances by which he left. it would just prolong the hysteria over russia. these things matter.

Haven't seen what Rambo Biggs is talking about, but I don't remember him having any scoops or inside advance tips. I also doubt Alex Jones has any either, other than from talking to known people who do, like Cernovich for example, or Roger Stone during the campaign.

Cerny did post something today about be careful about hoaxes going around to discredit alternative media, so he could be thinking the same thing as Assange.

More BS from Axios about Kushner being the "shadow Secretary of State" -- the son of some rich guy being far more powerful than the former CEO of oil giant Exxon Mobil who came hand-picked by former Sec State and GOP Establishment hack Condoleezza Rice.

This is a new story-line about his pulling the puppet strings at State, so let's see if /pol and the Alt-Right have learned to discipline themselves against obvious psy-ops.

Because I've been seeing this more lately, on Twitter it often takes the form of a manipulator retweeting someone who is proclaiming to be a victim of a dupe, I thought y'all would enjoy this. Holding up the victim for mockery to the in-crowd, but to others, it will look like a smart person ridiculing a fool. Hard for most people to tell which is which. Some people are more manipulative and take more delight in their exploits. It's easier to learn who these people are than to analyze what is often a poorly-contextualized tweet or comment.

It's the example of Duper's Delight I see most often. Another is showing a picture of a victim before the political hit: this happened to Milo.

"What motivated this smart, devious fellow to be so foolish? Probably what I call duping delight, the near irresistible thrill some people feel in taking a risk and getting away with it. Sometimes it includes contempt for the target who is being so ruthlessly and successfully exploited. It is hard to contain duping delight; those who feel it want to share their accomplishments with others, seeking admiration for their exploits."

Duper's Delight has been indulged in a lot lately by some of our enemies in the second-tier media. Journ*list never left us.

The purpose of this isn't to get rid of these individuals, but to try to stay one step ahead: Milo, Kushner, various psy-ops...all showed Duper's Delight being indulged in before and/or during. There were other tells, but this one is one of the easiest to spot, IMHO.

As awful of an Establishment hack as Priebus is, McMaster is just as bad, plus has far more power and connections than the guy who lost the 2012 election and was hell-bent on losing the 2016 election too.

It would tighten the grip that the Pentagon brass have over the White House. The Chief of Staff has nothing military or security-related in his role, so putting a General into that role would be a further step toward a military coup over civilian functions, however soft or hard it turns out to be.

They would have, not a spy, but an outright supervisor approving the daily business of the President -- and able to feed all sorts of info back to Arlington that the NSC Advisor would not be privy to.

Speaking of which, it's unlikely that McMaster's own replacement as NSC Advisor would be a Flynn type, but another Pentagon boarding party member. That would increase the number of Generals in the Cabinet to 4.

If they manage to drive out Trump's only high-ranking loyalist, Jeff Sessions, and a General takes over the Justice Dept, the US will complete its transformation into a third-world shit-state run by a military junta.

There used to be memes about Trump throwing Hillary Clinton et al out of helicopters, a la Pinochet.

It's time to recognize that if the military brass threw anyone out of a helicopter, it would be anti-Establishment outsider Trump and his loyalists, none of whom have enough political capital to protect themselves in a battle against the Pentagon.

Trump-ism sought to take away what the Pentagon brass feel is their raison d'etre -- propping up a crumbling globalist empire, making an enemy of Russia, NATO as a US sphere of influence over Europe, align with radical Islamic nations in the Gulf to counter non-jihadist Iran, continual expansionist wars, bloating the coffers of the MIC, and in general keeping defense spending sky-high.

At first they were willing to give him a chance to bend to their will, but he slashed hundreds of millions that were headed into Lockheed Martin's wallet on the F-35 deal, he stormed the CIA HQ and calls them a bunch of fifth-columnists, he had the Sec State and UN Ambassador and Press Sec all go out and say "no more regime change in Syria," and brought in Mike Flynn to take a hatchet to the corruption and incompetence and jihad-enabling within the intel side of the military.

In late March, the Pentagon came and gave him The Talk, and all of that changed. They keep trying to extend their influence over the White House, now the civilian roles as well as the military-security roles.

Right now, it's far more likely that future historians will compare Trump to Allende instead of Pinochet -- the people's President who was sidelined and overtaken by a military junta, who describe their mission as restoring stability to a political atmosphere that had been turning into "a bull in a china shop".

"I am told the pressure on @POTUS from Ivanka to stay in Paris has been intense."

OHHHHH MUHHHHHH GAAAAAWDDD!

Meanwhile: Trump pulls out of Paris Climate Accord.

Plenty of Alt-Right airheads re-tweeted that, chiming in with "We didn't vote for Ivanka" etc. Still zero awareness of power dynamics.

Strangely enough, it was mostly liberals responding directly to that tweet from Axios -- saying they aren't getting fooled any longer about Ivanka's power to steer her father toward the liberal side, as they had been promised for months.

Again, we see liberals and the Left at least able to discern power dynamics, whether the outcome has been in their favor or against it. Conservatives are far more easily strung along following bogus psy-ops narratives -- perhaps because they're more trusting than liberals, or more loyal / conformist / in-group minded.

Still, that creates a yuge problem when the enemy is targeting them for psy-ops. It is no longer trusting or conformist, but gullible and self-sabotaging to fixate on an utterly powerless woman in DC like Ivanka, just because the Establishment media told you to.